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Gauden finished tying his boots and stepped from the boys' section of the Candidate Barracks into the hallway outside. It wasn't quite dawn yet and he doubted the kitchens would have been up and about for much time, but he wanted to get an early start. He'd stopped waiting to see where he was being placed for chores; at some point, the Candidate Master had stopped bothering to try to diversify his tasks. With the Touching only a sevenday away, it seemed he had more to worry about than one Candidate's chores. If there was a change he could have the Candidates working in the stables tell him when they arrived. That seemed very unlikely to happen to Gauden, though.

He rolled his shoulders to remove the last lingering tenseness of sleep from them. He wanted to work more with the latest runner in from Tillek. Though his chores still lent themselves to being mostly stall-mucking, carrying tack, and rubbing down runners, if he finished early and the stablemaster was in a good mood, he would allow Gauden to spend time working with the animals. The latest runner was a young gelding, still being broken in. Gauden had worked with young animals before, but this one was a beautiful creature, and he couldn't help the appreciation for its breeding. Breeding was one area he hadn't really gotten involved in in the Beastcraft. He tended more towards animal trade and training, though he had a healthy dosing of healing and enough knowledge of breeding to know a good animal when he saw one. The breeding aspect just hadn't been as interesting or come as naturally to him as the rest of his craft did.

But he was wasting time. With a start, Gauden peered into the girl's barracks to try to get a glimpse of the outside sky through their windows. He didn't want to get a late start or he'd never get that chance with the runner.

The girl that spoke and then inserted herself in his line of vision was shorter than he by a good few inches, but obviously made up for it in half-thought-out plans of action. Gauden refocused his eyes on her from the windows and sized her up for a moment, trying to process what she'd just said. Had she just accused him of unchivalrous behavior?

"If I were a 'peeping Tom' I would wait until the girls were awake, wouldn't I?" Gauden's glance out the window had shown him his pause had only taken him to dawn. The girls in the Barracks were only just beginning to stir and after this presumptuous girl's offensive accusation-- he hadn't even thought about how it would have looked to be peering into the girl's barracks-- he was eager to be gone. He was wasting more time trying to point out she was wrong than he was spending getting to work, which was what he really wanted to be doing. He studied her face in the dim light of the dying glow by the door. "Or until it was bright enough to actually see them?" Sure he had made his point, he didn't see the need to give more reasons. "You should consider waiting to accuse someone until you're sure they're actually doing something you should accuse them for."

For a moment Gauden stared at her, debating whether or not he wanted to answer her. Eh. "Checking to see how close it is to sun-up. Wanted to get to the stables before dawn to get a head start."

He relaxed, knowing she'd realized she was being foolish and that the trouble had passed. The room was beginning to brighten and he could begin to make out her features a little more clearly, his eyes adjusting as gradually to the increasing natural light. Not that there was much of that yet. It occurred to him then that if she was suspicious of him being up so early, it was equally odd that she, a Candidate, was just getting back to the Barracks at the crack of dawn. Not that it was his business who her bedpartner was, but he was fairly sure the Weyr had rules against Candidates spending the nights elsewhere. Had she gotten up even earlier than him for a task of her own?

"Why are you up so early?" Turnabout was fair play, anyway.

Starsmith, huh? Well, with everyone wearing Candidate knots it was hard to tell what people had been before. It was plausible she was a Starsmith, though it would be strange for her to be here. There was no Starsmith Hall near Trine. It would be a great cover if she was the type to find a warm bed at night, but it would be easily contested by anyone with enough common sense to realize how unusual that was. Anyone being him, in this case.

"What are you doing all the way down here? Aren't Starsmiths up North? Ruatha way?"

Gauden couldn't help the way his brows had risen and his eyes scanned Melina's face as she suddenly spouted off about her craft. Yes. She was a Starcrafter, all right, and from Ruatha too. He hadn't thought that they'd made a Starcraft Hall down here yet, despite Melina's point about Honshu. Other than the sheer flow of words, though, it was a very direct explanation-- even if it had little to do with his initial small query.

"Comet going to hit us?" He asked. "You said some of it burns up in the atmosphere. Sounds like that means it's coming at us." Pern had been hit once before by comets, Gauden had heard from somewhere, but they'd been lucky since then. No repeat performances, as a Harper would say. Still, the way Melina was talking about it indicated the comet was some kind of danger to Pern, and her reason for coming South certainly explained how she'd been picked for a Trine Clutch instead of a Fort one. She didn't seem too excited to be selected for being a dragonrider. Her nonchalance about whether or not she Impressed brought his own discomfort with the idea flooding back and he shifted his stance slightly to try to relieve the pressure of that anxiety.

Gauden stared for a moment, then a very slight smile tilted his lips. He wasn't an alarmist. Dad hadn't raised him to be anyway. There was a bit of concern there, yeah, but what kind of people had she had to deal with that she thought he was that concerned over a good guess? Now, if she had said the comet was going to hit them, he may have panicked a bit. The thought of Impression caused more of a stir of concern in him than a distant rock floating beyond Pern.

She seemed happy to shift attentions slightly to the history of Star Crafting, and Gauden amiably shifted with her.

"Think I heard it somewhere," he replied, trying to remember where. "Don't remember names, though. History in the Beastcraft is mostly confined to the history of our handed down techniques and the standard learning Holds usually provide." He met her eyes again, coming out of his thoughts, and the quirk that had faded from his lips was back as a genuine smile. He knew where this was going; the girl had a plan. "Gonna be a Starsmith rider?"

Gauden hadn't considered that his Craft might help him in any way other than convincing his father that dragonriding wasn't a bad profession for his son. "From what I understand, I don't think much of anything gives you an edge with dragons. They pick or they don't. Can't make 'em. It's not like runners, where you can coax most of them to work with you." He paused, trying to think of how to put it when he had no personal experience with it. "Dragons are almost like people. Smart." His eyes met hers again and he smiled, the awkwardness of them meeting in the doorway beyond them now. "Can't really offer 'em a treat to convince them to come to you." The very thought was laughable, actually.

Beyond Melina's shoulder, the girl's room was becoming more clear to him and he didn't think it was from his eyes adjusting to the darkness.

"Should get moving. Don't want to be late to the stables," he told her, nodding at the windows beyond her.

"See you around," he replied. It was possible that with her late schedule and his early one that they would be doing this again sometime. He wondered momentarily how she would handle Candidate lessons, when those took place during the day. How did she handle any daytime activities if she was up all night? Sure, Starsmiths expected to be more nocturnal than most Pernese, but Gauden had stood nightwatches on pregnant mares and herdbeasts before and then had to go to classes in the morning too. He knew the strain it put on your body, even when one was just a matter of sitting around, waiting.

He turned away without asking, prepared to set off at a brisk pace down the hallway. He wouldn't run there, but he did need to make up for even the few lost minutes he'd spent being accused by and then conversing with-- the Starsmith girl. He stopped and turned around again without even having taken a step. "Didn't ask your name," he said as if telling her something she hadn't been witness to. "I'm Gauden."